After a punishing two years for the live music industry, pop shows returned with full force in 2022, with many of the world’s top-tier stars jostling to see their fans in a live setting once again. Punters have been faced with an embarrassment of riches, from Harry Styles’ multi-night US arena residencies to Charli XCX’s Grecian rave fantasia to Dua Lipa’s Studio 54-esque disco spectacular.
But even if you couldn’t afford the higher-than-ever price tags for big pop shows – the result of a significant labour shortage and the need for artists to recoup losses after two years without touring – it was also easier than ever, in 2022, to experience shows from afar. The year’s most-talked about tours – Lady Gaga’s Chromatica Ball, Lorde’s Solar Power tour, Rosalía for Motomami and the 1975’s At Their Very Best – felt as though they were designed to be shared on social media, with clips from each show proving inescapable on TikTok and Twitter.
Each night of Gaga’s tour trended on Twitter; each new 1975 show has led to a flood of new footage of frontman Matty Healy doing all manner of outrageous things from kissing fans to eating raw meat. For fans watching online, the beats of each show became as indelible as the actual hits.
LeRoy Bennett, a lighting and production designer who works extensively with Lady Gaga, as well as Paul McCartney, Ariana Grande and the Weeknd, says that he and Gaga were “absolutely” thinking about social media when designing the Chromatica Ball. “I take that approach quite a bit because social media has become such a big part of the world,” he says.
When conceptualising the Chromatica Ball, Bennett was drawn to the “stark, strong, harsh” world of brutalist architecture; the resulting show featured a dramatic grey set bright enough to be perfectly captured for social media and neutral enough for Gaga’s outlandish outfits to stand in stark relief. “The people way at the back have to see the artist – so when you light an artist, you have to pretty much do what you would do for a television show,” he says. “It’s a combination of theatre and TV, and a rock show and a pop show. It lends itself to that social media-friendly atmosphere.”
“Doing shows after all this time, it’s a joyous moment for the audience,” says Bennett. “People always want to go to see live entertainment. I mean – you can only watch so much TV.”